By Paul Punturieri. "A local blog with news, events and things that matter to all citizens of Moultonboro"

"Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Alexander Hamilton

Thursday, September 22, 2016

"Oppression"

You may have caught this letter to the editor in yesterdays Laconia Daily Sun by Moultonboro Tea Party spokesperson Don Ewing in which he asserts ( wrongly) that simply voting Republican would end oppression in our country. One sentence in particular caught my attention: " Republicans want all Americans to succeed, to get good educations, to have good jobs, to live in safe neighborhoods, to have loving intact families, and to have good reasons to expect a better future." Probably a surprise to Ewing is that many of us of all political parties also want that. The problem is that extreme ideology makes it a " can't get there from here" conundrum. It's easy to pick apart Ewing's assertions, with the simple facts that 9 out of 10 of the poorest states are Republican and 97 of the poorest 100 counties are in red states.

See what I mean?

My point is not that Republicans are the root cause of all our problems. That would be as absurd as the content of most of Don Ewing's frequent letters. My point is that extremism prevents us from even properly addressing our problems. Most Republicans are not extremist as evidenced by the recent primary. With the possible exception of the Republican gubernatorial primary, most voters were closer to the middle than to the far right. People are tired of the rhetoric and ideological fights. This is relevant to myself and our local elections come November 8th as incumbent NH House Rep. Glenn Cordelli is an active member of the Moultonboro Tea Party. Extremism does not solve problems or bring us together. It pulls us apart and prevents reasonable dialogue. Democrats, Republicans and independents can actually work together to solve problems and get things done. Extremists such as our local Tea Party, continually throw roadblocks into any form of compromise and that does nothing to help the citizens of our NH House district. Ending this gridlock is why I chose to run to represent you in the NH House.